


Rainy Spells

by WearingOutWinter



Category: Tomb Raider (Video Game)
Genre: Background Femslash, Gen, London, S.S. Endurance - Freeform, Urban Fantasy, post-Yamatai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 08:00:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2380820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WearingOutWinter/pseuds/WearingOutWinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lara contemplates the differences between London and Yamatai.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rainy Spells

The air's different in London. It's the first thing Lara notices, when they get back home. Different from the ocean, with its mists and salt-sprays, and different from Yamatai, with its smoke and its storms. Different from the ship back, with its darkness and sweat-drenched sheets. London's different. But it's better.

She and Sam are different too, Lara knows. She's not sure if they're better. They've both started drinking more. (Not too much, not really. They've always kept a few beers in the fridge, or a bottle of wine on a shelf. But these days, there's always a bottle of gin up there, too.) She jumps at small noises now, and carries a knife when she goes out. She keeps a gun closer to their bed than Sam would like. Sam, for her part, can't stand open flames any more, not even candles. And she always seems a bit more subdued when Lara picks her up after her therapy sessions.

Lara's got a shrink, too. Sam insisted on it, and Lara's glad that she did. And between their two professionals, they've both talked about a lot that, months earlier, Lara was damn sure they were going to carry to their graves. But there are some things that they just can't. Ancient queens and souls and sorcery. All the things that belong in legends and fables. Things made out of shadows and dust and unearthly lights. Things that have no place in London, with its bricks and concrete and stars bled into nothingness by the lights below them. Lara knows that if she mentioned that, mentioned any of that in the quiet earth-toned room she visits twice a week, it wouldn't shock or surprise. It would all be considered, be explained, as stress and sleep-deprivation and blood loss and shell-shock. (A term that Lara has grown strangely fond of. It just has more weight in her mouth than the tinny insinuating acronym of PTSD.)

Lara avoids hearing those explanations because she knows she might believe them. Because, after all, they're entirely reasonable. And everything that happened on Yamatai just... isn't. And one by one, she knows that those words, spoken in a gentle voice in a gently-lit room, would bleed away the reality of Yamatai. Of Himiko and storm guards and sacrifices offered up to the sun herself. Lara's become many things (Killer. Survivor. Savior—at least to hear Sam tell it.) but she's still an archeologist. She digs up history. So she can't allow those soothing words to bury it again. It might be horrible, but that history (her's, and Sam's, and Yamatai's, all tangled up together) is still _true_ , and Lara won't surrender that. Even if it would help her sleep better some nights.

O n those nights when she can't sleep,  Lara goes walking,  out into  London. It hardly even counts as dark, those city nights: the light is flung from every window, every street, bright enough to bleed away every single star. (So different from Yamatai, where the nights were inky black, so many stars above it was a wonder the sky could hold them all, and their only competition were  the orange flickering of campfires, the evil red of burning oil, and the occasional muzzle flash.)

T onight, Lara's boots are slapping the pavement, a staccato marching rhythm. She's not wandering aimlessly—she knows exactly where she's going.  It's only a few blocks from the apartment, a faux-gothic monster of a building, all dirty beige stone and looming gargoyles. Lara slows as she turns into the alley behind it,  judging her angle of attack. She's done this before, plenty of times, but that's no reason to get sloppy.

As the bells of London chime twelve , she starts on the fire escape, a rickety wrought-iron staircase that creaks as she hauls herself up off the pavement.  She climbs up just two flights before she gets bored, swinging herself out onto a window ledge. Above the glass, the stones jut out into finger- and toe-holds, and Lara's reflection grins at  her for a moment before she finds her grip. Onwards and upwards.

Cold stone beneath her fingers, boots scrabbling for purchase: it almost feels familiar. If there was a thunderstorm splitting the sky or freezing rain pouring down her neck, it truly would. As it is, Yamatai is comfortably distant, the building Lara climbs no more than an echo of its crumbling cliffs.

Her arms are burning by the time she reaches the roof, and her legs are scarcely better off, but Lara doesn't care. She pauses, just before the summit, to give one of the gargoyles a pat on the cheek. It's a marvelously hideous specimen: predatory beak, a horned, vaguely hircine head, and leonine body topped by two hunched bat-wings. The streetlights below gleam faintly off the downspout hidden in its beak as Lara swings her body outwards, levering herself over the edge.

On the roof, she stretches, breathes deep, and closes her eyes as the clocks chime the half-hour. Here, in this quiet place with the lights and the winds sounds of the city about and above and below her, Lara can believe. Not just in the magic of Yamatai, but in other things.  Perhaps many things. It is, after all, the witching hour.

She keeps her eyes closed, even when she hears the grind and scrape of stone against stone. Even when a gust of wind ruffles her hair, and chills the sweat between her shoulder blades. And as she turns to begin her descent, she doesn't look to the sky. But she spares a glance for the empty place where the gargoyle once stood, and smiles.

The magic is different in London. But it's better. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I'm quite fond of the idea that magic is not just something Lara encounters in faraway and ancient lands. Maybe it's everywhere, and she just couldn't see it before. This is my first time playing around with that premise, but hopefully not the last. 
> 
> Hope you enjoyed it. :)


End file.
